During the past week, the stories of child abuse and death have been almost too much to bear.

The Post today is finishing up an eight-day series about Colorado children whose deaths might have been prevented had child protection workers intervened.

These are children who lived on the fringes of society, and Colorado cannot turn away from their stories, no matter how difficult it is to absorb the details of their suffering.

The most important take-away from the series is that the system can — and must — improve.

For years, there have been studies, commissions and blue-ribbon panels all intended to improve Colorado's child protection system.

Though a couple of promising reforms are under way, let's be honest: They're just nibbling at the edges of the problems. Colorado — and that means state and county officials — must redouble efforts and explore some revisions that might be politically unpopular or very expensive.

Let's at least have the discussion.

In our minds, the debate begins with an examination of caseworker workloads. Such studies have been recommended no fewer than three times, yet one hasn't been done.

As the Post series revealed, Colorado doesn't know whether counties employ more caseworkers than they did five years ago, even though cases have increased significantly.

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This is at least partially owing to Colorado's system of county-administered services, overseen by the state. Regardless, these are basic questions that must be answered.

How many caseworkers are there and what is their workload? Is it reasonable?

Overall, there needs to be a more serious commitment than there was two years ago to take on politically thorny or expensive fixes, including the need for greater control at the state level.

Consider that the last blue-ribbon panel, circa 2010, effectively had just months to look into suggestions of revising Colorado's two-tiered child protective service system, and creating a statewide abuse call center.

The short time-frame and bureaucratic delays that plagued that effort left us wondering whether there was an appetite to explore controversial fixes.

Meanwhile, kids kept dying.

More than 40 percent of Colorado children who died of abuse and neglect in the last six years — that's 72 kids — were cared for by people who had contact with the system, The Post reported.

To be sure, the 2010 process created a caseworker training academy, and that was a positive development. Over the years, there have been other, well-intentioned efforts — such as creation of a child ombudsman's office — but not of the magnitude needed to see broad and effective change.

There are others we're not so sure about yet. As The Post reported, the state Department of Human Services is creating a reporting system to measure how well each county is doing in keeping children safe. That's valuable information.

Yet the state is not making county reports public. Only reports comparing the state to federal guidelines and past performance appear on the state's website. If Colorado is as dedicated to transparency as has been proclaimed, that should change.

Protecting Colorado's vulnerable children is a difficult and heartbreaking job. We must not look away from the system's flaws because fixing them would be politically problematic or expensive.